A LAND OF ETERNAL WARRING 



689 



"The man in the middle crossed the Straits of Belle Isle alone last winter, making three 

 trips to and fro. He dragged a boat he built of canvas and laths, 7 feet 6 inches long, 2 feet 

 3 inches wide, and 13 inches deep. He had a little canvas cover, an oil stove, some food, and 

 nearly 200 pounds of mails. He was out all one night in one of the worst gales we had, and 

 drifted next day to land with his boat almost to pieces. He covered the bad parts of the 

 laths with tin and went cheerfully on. He is a Labrador native, and his name is Ernest 

 Doane." 



can get in abundance through the ice all 

 winter. Salmon and trout come walk- 

 ing into a net, only a few yards long, 

 tied to your own wharf head. 



Hares — well, I shot four in a couple 

 of hours yesterday behind my house in 

 this now growing settlement. Par- 

 tridges — /. e., willow grouse — well, my 

 larder is stocked with them hanging 

 from hooks that were shot last fall. I 

 have known an Eskimo to kill 500 of 

 these partridges by the simple process of 

 fiicking ofif their heads with his dog whip. 

 Meanwhile there is another equally 

 guileless and dainty variety, called 

 spruce grouse, who sit on a bough while 

 you go and slip a noose over their head, 

 not requiring even the expense of am- 

 munition. 



I have not room here to write more of 

 the native races that the white popula- 

 tion are now displacing. Like all igno- 



rant people of all races they are the cause 

 of their own undoing. The indiscrimi- 

 nate cohabitation, and even marrying, is 

 one serious factor in their downfall. 

 Here are two cousins, each of which 

 marries the other's daughter, so that 

 each became the other's mother-in-law, 

 sister-in-law, and cousin ; and here, 

 again, is another, who married his own 

 son-in-law's daughter, so that she be- 

 came, I presume, her own step-grand- 

 mother and her own father's mother-in- 

 law^ 



Their lack of interest in sanitation or 

 any health laws, and contempt for any 

 prophylactic precautions, is simply phe- 

 nomenal. I have taken away the cloth- 

 ing of a patient with typhoid and a high 

 temperature to keep him in bed, and 

 found him outside the house next day 

 naked, while their passion for ''some- 

 thing to rub" or ''something that will 



